The cost of scholarly journals is on the rise, and professors at Iowa State and several other universities are thinking twice before they hand over their work to major publishers. ISU Faculty Senate President David Hopper said most of the content in journals is generated by university professors. When they decide to publish their information in journals, they hand over their copyrights. As a result, professors have to pay the publishers large sums of money to use their own information. “This is not just a problem at Iowa State; this is a national problem,” Hopper said. “If we don’t change our ways of publishing and become strong advocates of reasonably priced journals, in a few years institutions will be suffering.” Hopper said universities need to break the cycle, and until they do so, they will continue to pay. “The cost of the journals has been skyrocketing and each year it keeps growing,” Hopper said. “Within the past few years, Iowa State alone had to cancel thousands of journals due to the rise in costs.” If Iowa State keeps minimizing the number of available informational resources, Hopper said, the quality of education will decline. “The issue is how to get more resources to the library and how to encourage faculty to keep their copyrights to articles they publish in journals that share information resources,” Hopper said. ISU Provost Rollin Richmond said he believes the issue is that institutions cannot afford the steep increase in the cost of the journals. “The problem is that the publishers, over a number of decades, have been making a large profit – more than they need – and routinely charging libraries much more than it would cost to purchase on a individual basis,” Richmond said. “They calculate that the libraries need these journals so they can raise the price.” Richmond said major publishers have made as much as $100,000 in increases in journal subscriptions. Since then, 36 institutions across the nation from the University of Southern California to Duke University have become signatories in creating a series of principles and guidelines for emerging systems of scholarly publishing. “Essentially what it says is that intellectual property in these journals belongs to the author and institutions,” Richmond said. “We should own copyrights ourselves.” Richmond, who serves on the executive committee of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, said he has asked the ISU Faculty Senate to join the list of institutions in becoming a signatory of the principles. “This has been a long-term problem and it seems to be growing worse recently,” Richmond said. “People are getting more mad in academia about the actions of large publishers. In the future, institutions will have to take on increasing responsibility for publishing scholarly journals.” Faculty Senate member Barbara Mack said she and most ISU professors are dismayed by the amount of greed that has been exhibited by major scholarly publishers. “The journals used to be published by small nonprofit organizations that truly served the public interest,” said Mack, associate professor of journalism and mass communication. “But now, big publishers are only looking out for profit margins and not the professors.” Mack said profits are getting in the way of spreading knowledge. “Ultimately, if the publishers continue to be greedy, they will end up killing themselves because the universities and professors will find alternative ways to reclaim our intellectual property,” Mack said.